➢ The composer and double bassist Tana Santana will accompany with live music the screening of the film directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor that premiered one hundred years ago. It will be the protagonist of Camera Obscura’s second session, the silent film section with live music of the Festival. Tomorrow, April 15, at 21:30 p.m. at Miller
➢ Tickets to enjoy the American film can be purchased at a price of 4 euros on lpafilmfestival.com and entrees.es
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Friday, April 14, 2023.- Miller will once again open its doors this Saturday, April 15, to Camera Obscura. The section that devotes its screenings to silent film classics with live music will recover just one day after the opening of the 22nd edition of the film event one of the greatest comedies in history: Safety Last! (USA, 1923, 80 min.). Directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, the film, which also celebrates its one-hundred-year anniversary, will revive in the cultural hall of Santa Catalina Park one of the most memorable images in the history of the seventh art in which the protagonist, the iconic Harold Lloyd, can be seen hanging from the hands of a large skyscraper clock.
The screening of the film will begin at 9:30 p.m., accompanied by the piece that the composer, double bassist and electric bassist Tana Santana has created for the occasion. Tickets to enjoy this experience are on sale at a price of 4 euros at the festival’s website, lpafilmfestival.com, as well as at entrees.es. There you can also purchase tickets for Camera Obscura’s last session scheduled for Wednesday 19, which includes Entr’acte by René Clair (France, 1924, 25 min.) and The Smiling Madame Beudet (La souriante Madame Beudet, France, 1923, 38 min.) directed by Germaine Dulac. Both films will be accompanied by the International Bach Festival (IBF), conducted by Humberto Armas.
As in its last edition, the section will start the festival’s busy schedule of screenings, which will begin tonight at 9:00 p.m. with Cœur fidèle (The Faithful Heart, France, 1923, 87 min.) accompanied by the music of Argentine bandoneon player Santiago Cimadevilla. Just one day later, Harold Lloyd will come to Miller with the film that made him a symbol of the seventh art, as well as the highest paid actor during last century’s roaring 20s.
Comedy and suspense come together in Safety Last!, the piece whose origin revolves around the long final scene in which the protagonist can be seen climbing a skyscraper in the middle of downtown Los Angeles. The idea came precisely after the famous American comedian saw the man who would later become his co-star climbing a building for real. He is Bill Strother, known as the ‘human spider’, who in the film took on the role of Lloyd’s roommate.
The film recounts the efforts of a young man to make his fiancée believe that he is a businessman when in reality he works as a department store clerk. An amusing 80-minute plot that revolves around the time in which the actor caricatures American society and its consumer habits through a metaphor about social climbing in the United States of the time. With this film, Lloyd ended up crowning himself as ‘king of the comedy thriller’.
Safety Last! was selected in 1994 for preservation in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. Its revival will come to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria with a musical proposal by Tana Santana, a renowned musician trained on the electric bass at the prestigious Musikene, a higher music center in the Basque Country, who has proven expertise in genres ranging from jazz to flamenco. For the first time, he’ll put his experience at the service of the Festival with the composition and interpretation of the pieces that will accompany the screening of the film in which, as he revealed at a press conference, he has tried to “recreate the atmosphere of the first jazz and Dixieland bands” of the 20s, 30s and 40s.
To this end, Santana said he has created compositions that try to complement the film, as well as “basic standards” that were present in historical bands and artists. The composer’s creation will be carried out with a quintet formation that includes Roberto Nieva on alto sax, David Xirgu on drums, Xan Campos on piano and Jairo Cabrera on trumpet, flugelhorn, flute and clarinet. “We will play like a jazz concert in which there is not a full score from beginning to end, but we’ll be inserting other pieces and works and leaving a margin for improvisation in parallel to the film. And I think that makes it very interesting because it gives a very dynamic character to the music,” he explained.
Camera Obscura selection
Cœur fidèle / The Faithful Heart, by Jean Epstein (France, 1923, 87 min.)
Safety Last!, by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor (USA, 1923, 80 min.)
Entr’acte, by René Clair (France, 1924, 25 min.)
La souriante Madame Beudet / The Smiling Madame Beudet, by Germaine Dulac (France, 1923, 38 min.)
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